Opinion Contributor

The end of the middle class?

The president offers more extensive reforms, but he, too, basically seems to assume that by giving the economy another boost, we can start putting people to work and generate sustainable growth. He still believes that the economy, as he said in his State of the Union address, is “poised for recovery.” It’s just addled by bad weather, European crisis and the like.

The reality is far more dire. Forty-six million Americans are living in poverty — the highest number since we began keeping track. Incomes are falling; the median household income is down 6.4 percent since 2007.

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And jobs are a calamity. We have fewer payroll jobs now than we did in 2000, but we’ve added 30 million to our population since then. Twenty-five million people are in need of full-time work. We’ve lost about 10 percent of middle-class jobs since 2000.

And the jobs coming back are disproportionately low-wage and low-skill. Nearly 20 percent of working adults have jobs that do not pay enough to lift a family of four out of poverty. Median wages for men ages 30 to 50 have declined by nearly 30 percent since 1969. American companies are still shipping good jobs abroad, while we borrow more than $1 billion a day from foreigners to cover our trade deficit.

This economy is not like a new car with a depleted battery, needing only a jolt to be humming again. It’s an old jalopy with a spent transmission and a broken chassis. We either rebuild it or trade it in.

The president made this case better than anyone during the 2008 campaign, arguing that we couldn’t go back to the old economy. We have to build a new foundation for growth, one in which America makes more and sells more, invests more and consumes less.

The elements of a serious jobs plan seem clear. We need massive renovation of the economy, reviving America as a center not just of innovation but also production. We need to invest in people so Americans get the education needed for the next economy. Workers must be empowered to share in the increased profits and productivity, while we must curb the distorted pay packages that give corporate executives multimillion-dollar short-term incentives to cook the books — or plunder the company.

The core initiatives aren’t magic — but they have to be of a size commensurate with the challenge. We need a broad and sustained initiative to rebuild America, to modernize everything from aged sewers to outmoded transportation systems. These are also just the sort of jobs that can bolster the broader American middle class.

With the U.S. able to borrow money virtually for free and the construction industry prostrate, there is no better opportunity for a massive, sustained investment that will put people to work while making us far more competitive.

We also need a strong manufacturing strategy to make things in America. That requires a new trade policy that sets the goal of balancing our trade and enforces the policies to meet it.

A first step has to be challenging China to adjust its currency and treating its exports in the same fashion it treats ours. That should also include a major effort to capture a lead in the green industrial revolution that will define the markets of the future. China, Germany and other nations have sensibly set out to dominate the markets for renewable energy, energy-efficient appliances and transport.

The GOP wants to make Solyndra, the failed solar-power company, a major scandal. But the scandal allowed China to capture the solar industry with subsidies and to capture technology — erasing any possibility for U.S. companies to compete.

Burton Folsom, Jr., a professor of history at Hillsdale College and senior historian at the Foundation for Economic Education, asks the decisive question New Deal: "But did it work?" The answer, to put it briefly, is "not really."

Folsom begins the book by revealing a startling confession by Henry Morgenthau, secretary of the Treasury, and a close personal confidante of Roosevelt. On May 9, 1939, Morgenthau told the House Ways and Means Committee:

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. .... And an enormous debt to boot!"

Morgenthau's frustration was understandable: in April 1939, unemployment was over 20 percent. This was nearly a decade after the 1929 crash and more than 6 years after FDR's inauguration.

During that time, FDR tried everything to end the crisis: cartelizing industry (the NRA), subsidizing farmers (the AAA), creating make-work projects (the WPA), promoting organized labor (the Wagner Act), and finally, launching the modern welfare state (social security, minimum wage laws, the AFDC). It was all funded by a combination of increased debt, excise taxes, and high progressive income taxation.

Yet, unemployment stayed very high throughout the entire period, declining during FDR's first term, then rising in his second term. As late as June 1939, industrial production remained significantly below 1929 levels (81 vs. 100).

Suzie: True, the New Deal didn't get the economy rolling again, though it could be argued that it prevented it from getting worse.

So, what did get the economy rolling again? A little thing called World War 2, where the government spent more money per GDP than any other time in American history. So, in reality, the New Deal just wasn't big enough.

"But both sides fail to address the scope of our challenge. Republicans seem to believe that simply rolling back Obama’s reforms and returning to former President George W. Bush’s economy will set us straight. But those are the policies that drove us off the cliff. They weren’t working for most Americans even when the economy was growing."

That's misleading. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas addresses the scope of this challenge and even goes beyond it. Returning to a sound money system is key. If the Fed hadn't loaned foreign banks trillions of dollars in the past few years in complete secrecy we might be a lot better off. Rep. Paul is the only one fighting for Fed transparency. It is telling that all the presidential candidates have started to adopt Ron Paul's ideas in some way or another. None of the other Republicans understand what must be done. The economy needs much more than a quick fix. It needs a complete overhaul. That is why America needs Ron Paul as president.

Discussion of the future is of great interest to me. We traditional American Indians are well known for our future vision; we have survived for thousands of years where Anglo peoples could not. We Indians do whatever ever is needed to survive including giving our lives to fight back genocide. We died by the tens of millions during the genocide, we do whatever is needed to survive, including giving up our lives, but never our pride and dignity.

Your essay, Robert L. Borosage, has me on edge, on the verge of expressing anger. You are a far left liberal from over there at Arianna's Huff&Puff mule manure place, a web site with zero credibility. Your essay is riddled with annoying left liberal elitist arrogance. Nonetheless I will work at remaining lucid rather than angry.

There is a right ugly King Kong gorilla sitting in the middle of your writings. This reminds me of boy who came here and went on and on about information technology being the economic driver and future of America, "Information Technology! This is the salvation of America!" Mule manure. You go on about a "new economy" based on research and development, "Everyone goes to college! All become beard scratching left liberal professors pumping out great ideas and wild innovations!"

America is currently suffering a left liberal Harvard law professor. He is void of ideas and innovation.

This gorilla of yours is plumbers, secretaries, electricians, welders, auto mechanics, carpenters, roofers, painters, stewardesses, cooks, maids, masons, clerks, typists, gardeners, truck drivers, farmers and most productive, house wives. This is the salt-of-the-earth of which I am a proud member although my first name to many is, "Dr." This is a title I usually keep concealed to protect my integrity and dignity.

Most of those people are middle age Americans who have lost their jobs to Mexican illegals or lost their jobs to our economic collapse. Many of those middle age, middle class Americans have lost their homes and are living on the streets as are their children. Those Americans have no hope and no future. Those are people you, Robert L. Borosage, are arrogantly tossing into America's trash dumpster, by the tens of millions, which is a modern day genocide of America's middle class.

A boy comes here and prattles on about information technology. You blather about research and innovation. Both of you proclaim with arrogance, "College and Technology will save our America!"

Middle age, middle class Americans, we of the unwashed masses, we slovenly hard working salt-of-the-earth, cannot afford college much less afford to abandon our children while sitting and listening to beard scratching left liberal professors blather on in echoing lecture halls which are predominately populated by zero foresight party-hardy giggling children of the wealthy elite.

This is not a lost economic decade as you suggest. This is an era of a lost generation, our middle age, middle class American families. This left liberal notion of saving America through innovation and high technology is cruel class warfare. This is left liberal elitists, champagne socialists, looking down from high white Ivory Towers of arrogance, looking down at struggling American families and saying, "Forget them, they are just ignorant blue collar workers."

Your ugly King Kong gorilla which you so carefully avoid seeing is America has tens of millions, fifty million, sixty million and more, honest hard working middle age, middle class American families who cannot afford college, cannot afford to learn high technology skills, and most exasperating, have no interest in becoming pencil neck geek cubicle workers nor beard scratching left liberal professors. These are Americans who cannot attain your pie-in-the-sky utopian ideals.

America enjoys tens of millions of skilled hard working people whose skills are no longer valued and whose very existence is no longer valued. You, Arianna Huff&Puff, other left liberals of your sort are willingly breaking the backbone of America, middle age, middle class American families.

America does not need nor can afford innovation, technology, Solyndra nor spreading the wealth around. America needs jobs for carpenters, secretaries, mechanics, farmers and all those other priceless patriotic hard working Americans with skilled hands and skilled minds. America needs jobs which leave calluses on hands and leaves backs sore. We need real jobs, not fantasy land jobs off where cotton ball clouds dot a blue sky, where rainbows light every street corner, where unicorns prance, where talking monkeys ride unicycles to delight us and on all building sides are huge posters of Obama grinning and saying, "What, Me Worry?"

Robert L. Borosage, you are calling for abandoning an entire class of Americans, calling for abandoning an entire generation of middle age, middle class families, you are calling for abandoning those good peoples to lives of misery and poverty.

You would not survive our traditional American Indian ways; you are not willing to do whatever is needed to survive, no matter the cost. A boy like you, we would instantly banish from our lands, you are a liability, you offer nothing of real value.

I am quite sure you do not have a single callus on your hands. I am right, yes?

End the 7.65% Employment Tax (the employer half of FICA and Medicare tax). Replace the lost revenue with a 20% tariff on all imports; 25% on Chinese imports because of their brazen theft of intellectual property and currency manipulation.

We have lost the Great Trade War of the late 20th Century and early 21st Century. We have been reduced to a colony. We are back in the 18th century, with industrialized nations using us as a dumping ground for their manufacturers.

Next, break ground on a new nuclear power plant each month - until we can do it faster. Nuclear power plants are 90% steel and cement. That means lots of great jobs that don't need a PHD.

Save the whining about 'free trade' and the hysteria about nuclear power: Free Trade is the unicorn of economics. Elvis has been spotted more often in the last few decades than real examples of free trade. And, we regularly send dozens of nuclear power plants out on (and under) the high seas: The U.S. Navy has been doing it for decades. And, those nuclear power plants are predominantly run by twenty somethings with two years of technical training.

Next, make every drop of diesel and jet fuel needed in America from domestic coal - did you know you can make pristine clean fuel from coal at a fraction of the cost of what we pay for the same fuel made from imported oil?

Finally, did you know we use as much oil each year heating homes as is needed to power ten million cars? All of that should be replaced with natural gas.

America is currently suffering a left liberal Harvard law professor. He is void of ideas and innovation.

Obama has only one idea and only one goal: the demise and fall of the Republic

Dec 2008 speech:BARACK OBAMA: Well, thank you so much, everybody. It is wonderful to be here. Thank you to UNLV for helping to sponsor this event, to CAP for the outstanding work you do, but most of all thanks to SEIU.

I've got a history with this union. When I was a young organizer, I had just moved to Chicago. I started with working with SEIU Local 880, home health care workers, to make sure that they were registered to vote. I had a say in the politics in Illinois. When I went to the state legislature, I worked with Tom Balanoff in SEIU

SEIU’s Full Frontal Communism

May 6, 2011 By Gulag Bound 1 Comment

NoisyRoom, Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

I believe about a year ago, NoisyRoom and numerous other blogs, researchers and pundits began to warn Americans that there would come a day in the near future that Marxists and Communists would take off their masks and proudly proclaim their ideals. That they would no longer fear the American public as they would feel that they were unstoppable – far too powerful to be stopped in their quest for political power and domination. Sadly, that day has arrived. Yes, indeed… This is what democracy looks like.

Witness SEIU‘s full frontal communism on display at the May Day Rally in Los Angeles. The event was sponsored by SEIU and a cabal of Communist allies, who have gleefully aligned and are celebrating the demise and fall of the Republic. Marching in militant lockstep, SEIU proudly waved Communist flags and Communists in turn brandished union signs. They were one – comrades indistinguishable from one another. Finally honest in intention and in evil agenda.

Skint is a smart boy, "Know who is writing the message.....Always check them out....Investigate them....Because the media doesn't do the job."

Wise and fitting words for these modern times of mass disinformation. I am so burnt out on this constant stream of lies coming from our elected leaders, political pundits and our mainstream news media.

I have heavy calluses on my hands. This is a revealing truth and a rare truth in today's world.

Next, make every drop of diesel and jet fuel needed in America from domestic coal - did you know you can make pristine clean fuel from coal at a fraction of the cost of what we pay for the same fuel made from imported oil?

Shortly after B. Obama's elevation, we started hearing the phrase, "the new normal" . . . . we've had recessions before - high gas prices before, high unemployment before, high inflation before, but we never 'accepted' it. We always lived through it, worked our way through it, innovated our way through it, or whatever it took . . . . but the hope and change that brought our savior to office quickly fell away to just 'change' . . . . we've lost the hope. I honestly believe that those who speak to us about "the new normal" . . . the press . . . do so because they're still so enamored of Obama that they can't bring themselves to admit that he's not "the One" they thought he was. They'd rather think that, if He can't solve these problems, then they can't be solved . . . . . thus, "the new normal".

It doesn't have to stay this way -- but we have to have people in government who recognize that we shouldn't have to accept these conditions. The clean-out of Washington has to continue, starting with Barack Obama in '12.

Suzie Qte notices what I notice, "Obama has only one idea and only one goal: the demise and fall of the Republic"

As crazy as this reads, I sincerely believe this, sincerely believe Obama is out to destroy America.

Back in 2007 and 2008 I knew Obama is bad news. I campaigned hard to keep him out of the Oval Office. I was so ignorant, I never realized what really bad news he is. Obama is an American nightmare, the worst which can happen.

First year or two, I thought, "Well, no, Obama is plain stupid." I took to political blogging like crazy, took to working at warning Americans, "Obama is bad news. He is harming our America." Left liberals proclaimed me a racist. Left liberal media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times banished me from their blogs.

I took to thinking Obama is simply a corrupt Chicago politician. I could not rationalize this, he is acting beyond corruption. I thought maybe this is some deep seated Black Liberation issue with him and taught to him by Jeremiah Wright. This did not quite fit with his behavior, "Is he a domestic terrorist inspired by Bill Ayers?" I am unsure, there are some signs of this. I asked myself, "Why is Obama so enamored with Islam?" I dismissed this thinking of mine as being too crazy.

Beginning of this year my thinking about Obama turned fatally serious. Today I sincerely view Obama as suffering a type of mental imbalance; he is beyond being stupid, he is cleverly deranged. Looking back, studying his behaviors, considering the really big picture, I strongly sense Obama hates America for whatever personal reasons. You and I, Suzie, could discuss this for a month of Sundays and I don't think we would ever come to understand what drives Obama to inflict so much harm on our America.

Many will label me crazy but I sincerely believe Obama is bent on inflicting as much harm on America as possible. I don't know, this might be he is pitching a years' long childish temper tantrum. Whatever, something ain't right in his head; he telegraphs a seething hatred of America. Obama is truly an American nightmare.

It doesn't have to stay this way -- but we have to have people in government who recognize that we shouldn't have to accept these conditions. The clean-out of Washington has to continue, starting with Barack Obama in '12.

I agree.

Who are these visionaries?

Who can capture this moment and move the country forward.

Seems like this country only produces company men....dull, gray party apparatchiks.

These guys can't dream of the future because they focus on idiotic minutiae and partisan gain.

Just another call for "bold initiatives" that involve massive government engineering (read meddling) with the economy. At the root of U.S. economic decline is a cultural disease involving the decline of individual character and traditional American values combined with the rise of an entitlement mentality nourished by the modern welfare state now endorsed by both major parties. We confuse cause and effect as we debate endlessly the sources of our malaise. Worse, we pretend that papering over these ugly truths about America will somehow allow us to return to more blissful times. As if finding just the right mix of government policies will fix everything. Not likely. The problems are more fundamental and will not be fixed by tinkering around the edges,